Month: August 2015

I am pretty obsessive about using every single item that comes from my garden. My frugal husband is too. Last year he experimented with cooking down the tomato scraps (skins, seeds, stems, watery juice) and then straining the mixture to see what would happen and wow, what a discovery! When we are really in high gear we will cook down the meat of the tomato for our main sauce and in another pot cook off the sauce from the skins, stems and seeds and add it back in to the main batch. We often get 1-3 extra pints with this method. We have also noticed that the product from the skins and seeds has a deep, rich and tangy flavor. Added to the bright and mild sweetness of the main sauce, the combination is a winner.

Today however I strained it once, added salt and am left with the most wonderful tomato juice. This stuff won’t last a day. From 8lbs of tomatoes came 5 pints of crushed tomatoes.